Image courtesy FX
I am a huge fan of American Horror Story (except for that freak fest that was Freak Show – I couldn’t get through that one). However, Red Tide seems to have taken things to a new level of gore, or perhaps I am just sensitive to doing wrong to pregnant women and babies. Thus, Red Tide, as intriguing as the concept is, has been a bit of a nightmare to watch.
It’s been a nightmare on another level as well. And I am wondering if other creative types are having as difficult a time as I am with the premise that a pill can cause one to make great art.
I am a writer working on my first full length novel, and my teenage child, my partner in crime in watching AHS, said early on that they believed I would absolutely take the little black pill in order to tap into my greatness.
“I absolutely would not,” I argued.
“Yes, you would,” they insisted.
I like to think that I am right when I say I absolutely would not. For blood to be the price of brilliance? I’ll just stay mediocre and undiscovered thank you very much.
But alone, at night, in the dark, when nightmares come out to play, even I have to wonder “Would it be such a high price to pay?” In my waking hours I know that I would never do it. And yet, look at the characters who through various influences and for a variety of reasons also insisted the black pill was not an option and eventually succumbed. It’s easy to sit on my high horse in the comfort of my home with no pill waiting for me at the pharmacy drive-thru. What if this really were a possibility?
Do you have the heeby jeebies yet?
But honestly, for me, this isn’t even the worst part of the plot - nor the one that really keeps me up at night. It’s the idea that before you take the black pill, you don’t know for sure whether you are talented enough to take the pill and have it inspire greatness. You could just become a nameless, hairless, cemetery dwelling, possum eating zombie.
In many ways that pill represents all the self-doubt and criticism that every artist I’ve ever known heaps upon themselves. Am I good enough? Do I have anything worth saying? Will people understand what I’m trying to express in my art? We are afraid for our work to be seen in public. We fear criticism. I can’t quit my day job. I’ll never be able to make a living at this. Am I truly talented? Or am I just like everyone else who wants to write a book, paint a masterpiece or produce a beloved album that goes triple platinum?
And perhaps the scariest thing of all? Most creatives fear that at the end of all their struggling, they will be found out and people will realize that they aren’t great. That they don’t have talent. And they will be revealed as ordinary people, slogging through the 9 to 5 routine, their songs unsung, their words unread, and they will die with their greatest works still within them, or worse yet, they will live boring lives.
Is that a fate worse than death? To be a “pale person”? And off of the small screen and apart from the fictional world portrayed in Red Tide, how will we ever find the answer to the question “Am I good enough?”
Thanks American Horror Story - for freaking me out with zombies and vampires and sibling blood sucking. But more than that, thanks for giving me a whole new way to wonder if my work is good enough. In your world, would I be one of the greats, or would I be lined up at the blood bank with my thermos?
Lauren Cassel Brownell is author of the novel Dying to Donate, available now for pre-order and launching on August 19th. She has written for magazines in the United States and Canada, served as a food columnist for one of Florida’s largest newspapers, written two short plays that have both been produced by local community theatres, and is the author of Zen and the Art of Housekeeping: The Path to Finding Meaning in Your Cleaning.She lives in Lubbock, Texas with her family.